There's "so bad it's good" cinema and then there's director James Bryans' "Don't Go in the Woods". This thing truly reaches a pinnacle of laughable absurdity. While it's not going to appeal to everybody, it's got a highly respectable go for broke attitude, an amazing body count, lots and lots of gore (once it gets going), terrible acting & writing, and a generous amount of belly laughs. These all make it extremely engaging entertainment.Despite the title, there's plenty of people stupid enough to go into the woods and help our merry maniac (Tom Drury) reach record numbers. Grunting like a constipated pirate, and sporting a hilarious wardrobe, the killer goes about his business. Four outdoorsy types make up our main characters: Peter (Jack McClelland), Ingrid (Mary Gail Artz), Craig (James P. Hayden), and Joanie (Angie Brown).Bryan swears that he intended this to be a comedy, and it's not that hard to believe him, given how utterly ridiculous his movie is. It hits the ground running - the first person to die bites it within the first three minutes - and delivers sadistic dark humour and bucket loads of blood. Bryans' explanation for the motive behind this murder spree is one of the worst / best that you're likely to hear. Our victims are a colourful bunch - an older couple making out, an artist, an ornithologist, etc. The randomness of the whole thing is delicious.The dialogue and performances are just uproarious at times. Watch when one character sights the dead body of a friend, and marvel at the faces that they make. The cherry on this sundae is one of the most idiotic music scores that this viewer has ever heard, supplemented by a giggle inducing end credits song that borrows from the Teddy Bears' Picnic.Objectively speaking, "Don't Go in the Woods" is flat out garbage. But for certain tastes, it's mighty fine garbage.Co-star Artz actually went on to become a prolific casting director; her first credit in that capacity was "Halloween II", from the same year as this.Five out of 10.

***SPOILERS*** Hiking through the woods of the great Pacific Northwest a group of campers run into this deranged maniac who feels that their encroaching on his territory. Unlike the more of less harmless and , despite his overly hairy appearance,likable Big Foot this guy really means business who not only takes out most of the campers but a number of unrelated persons including a bird watcher and wheelchair bound nature boy along with them. The manic looking like an extra from the movie one million years B.C does his dirty and bloody work with what looks like a both saber and fur covered club dispatching as well as decapitating, the crippled & wheelchair nature boy, more then a dozen victims.With the manic getting out of control it's now up to the local sheriff, who looks like a king size version of Michael Moore, to rustle up a posse to stop the carnage from spreading beyond the tree-line and into the nearby population centers. Meanwhile back in the dark woods two of the surviving campers Peter & Ingrid are left to face the killer alone at his cabin in the woods where he keeps his victims body parts in storage to cook and eat later. With the sheriff and his posse nowhere in sight it's up to Peter and Ingrid to take the manic on single handed in his home turf or territory that lead to the incredible blood soaked final.For a movie with non actors and a bottom basement budget "Don't go in the Woods" really accomplishes, in scaring its audience, what it set out to do. In fact one of the scariest scenes in the film had nothing at all to do with the campers, whom the manic was out to murder, but a couple in a trailer Dick & Cherry. Whom he not only sliced up but in Cherry's case set the trailer in fire and rolled in down an embankment with her, after being sliced to pieces, in it and still alive and screaming hysterically!P.S Check popular Texas DJ Ken Cater as the more then 350 pound sheriff who despite his size and being in no shape to be hiking or slumbering through the woods is, in him sticking out like a sour thumb, totally overlooked by the manic who had no trouble at all taking out a number of far lighter and faster victims who unlike Carter were no real threat to him!

Irresistible hunk of wilderness slasher trash regarding a grotesquely filthy homicidal mountain man who viciously attacks any camping tourist who enters his neck of the woods. I guess he might be a cannibal as well since he stores the bodies of the fallen in bags, placed inside his makeshift house, where a private collection of his victims are also present. While most victims are merely presented as lambs to the slaughter(..and artist, an ornithologist, wheel-chair cripple), the film does follow four backpackers, Peter(Jack McClelland), Ingrid(Mary Gail Artz), Craig(James Hayden)and Joanie(Angie Brown)who spend a great deal of time either arguing or pulling pranks on each other. They will eventually fall prey to the maniac who thoroughly enjoys hunting down his quarry and hacking away at them with a home-made spear(..a long stick with a blade on the end which sheds a hell of a lot of blood). While Joanie watches from her sleeping bag, hung from a tree(..by boyfriend Craig, whose the type of know-it-all who enjoys the authoritative sound of his own voice as he informs the others of the ways of living in the wilderness), Craig is sliced and diced while Peter, who has seen the killer and made a great escape, hunts for Ingrid. Joanie, separated from her friends, must find shelter while Peter and Ingrid attempt to find any sign of civilization, each trying to avoid being hacked to pieces by the demented psycho.Bottom line, this film is about a maniac savagely attacking innocent folks who are minding their own business. The film must be set during tourist season because the killer has quite a list of victims to dispatch. The camera-work is mostly following the actions of the characters as they move throughout the woods..I guess this would explain why the film is so heavily dubbed. Layered like a lot of low-budget slashers with a synth score, the director often shoots the picturesque landscape of Utah, I'm guessing, to establish that the killer has plenty of territory to hide and roam as those from the city infiltrate his home opening up themselves to certain terror. The dialogue and dubbing is indeed cringe-worthy, no doubt, and there's some really mind-bogglingly stupid behavior exhibited by certain survivors who escape only to re-enter the woods. The director obviously had a limited budget to work with and the knife and machete stabbings are heavily edited with lots of blood splattering to and fro, cutting away from showing the weapons actually penetrating the bodies of those attacked. I found some of the killings rather effective because, despite not displaying how the blade truly slices flesh, the murders are so savage and unrelentingly sadistic that the menace behind the attacks left an impression. The film doesn't pretend to be anything other than a slasher where victims are brutally slain by a nutcase. The Utah setting probably enhances this film despite it's unoriginal plot and rather mundane characters/performances. I won't lie, though, when I say that I had fun with this one. The ending, reflecting an infant the sicko kidnapped, is a hoot. The most creative kill would have to be how the killer brutally stabs a couple who were together in a sleeping bag, thrown over a tree and stabbed repeatedly(..the director even shows their reactions inside the bag!).

A pair of young campers decide to have a nice weekend with nature. Too bad for them (and others) that a deranged killer lives in the woods, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out what he wants to do. Will any of them make it out alive. Will the local police save the day? Will you find a reason to care? Done during the slasher craze of the 80's, "Don't Go in the Woods" is bad in many ways. There are poorly done attempts at humor, the gore is about as convincing as paper machete, the narrative is as confusing as it gets, we get constant useless shots of the natural world, and the dialog is dubbed in-and terrible.At least the weird electronic score by H. Kingsley Thurher is fun in a slasher movie electronic score way, and a few of the clichés (like the guy warning the kids) are dumb fun. As it stands though, "Don't Go in the Woods", while not the worst backwoods/kids going camping slasher, is still bad on all accounts.